Re: Post-Gothic "Getic" fantasies: the source(s)

--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

> Cf. C.T.R. Hayward,ed. and transl., "Saint Jerome's
> HEBREW QUESTIONS ON GENESIS", Oxford: Clarendon Press
> 1995.
>
> p.39: "I know that a certain man has referred Gog and
> Magog, both as regards the present verse and in
> Ezekiel, to the account of the Goths who were recently
> ravaging our land: whether this is true is shown by
> the outcome of the actual battle [recorded in Ezekiel
> 38-9]. But in fact all learned men in the past had
> certainly been accustomed to calling the Goths Getae
> rather than Gog and Magog."
>
> ==The context is Jerome's analysis of GENESIS 10:2
> ("The sons of Japhet were Gomer and Magog and Madai
> and Javan and Thubal and Mosoch and Thiras")
>
> ==The "certain man" is St. Ambrose of Milan, who in
> his DE FIDE (2.16), written shortly after Adrianople
> (378 AD) had identified the victorious Goths with the
> Biblical "Gog and Magog". BTW Jerome followed Josephus
> in suggesting that Gog and Magog="Scythians", and did
> not equate Scythians and Goths. St Ambrose for his
> part knew nothing about Goths as Getae.
>
> === The "recent ravages" point to the events of
> 378-382.
>
> =="all learned men in the past": Jerome on the next
> page (commenting on GENESIS 10:4-5) explicitly
> mentions Varro, Sisinnius Capito, and Phlegon as "most
> learned men". Hayward doubts that Jerome actually read
> their works and suggests that "he may indeed have used
> their names simply to convince his audience of his
> great learning and wide range of knowledge" (p. 141).
> Jerome certainly knew and used Herodotus, Ovid,
> Strabo, and Pliny. But it is clear enough that the
> equation Goths=Getae is his own understanding of these
> learned sources, not a reference to any statement made
> by them. The expression "all learned men" cannot mean
> anything else than that Jerome found many references
> to the Getae in previous writings. Since in his time
> the Goths occupied the northern shores of the Danube,
> and since in the sources which spoke of the Getae in
> the past that is where the latter were primarily
> located, he simply concluded that yesterday's Getae
> were today's Goths. It's as simple as that. Orosius
> repeated Jerome, and Jordanes repeated Orosius.
>
> ===Hayward offers convincing proof (pp.23-27) that the
> QUAESTIONES HEBRAICAE IN GENESIM were completed in
> early 393.
>
> Therefore, unless and until new evidence emerges, the
> equation Goths=Getae should be attributed to Jerome,
> writing in Bethlehem in the very late 4th c. AD.
>

I think I will take issue with your "cannot mean anything else" that
that Jerome made the story up, based on things he thought he had
read. It is not "as simple as that". The really simple interpretation
of Jerome's words is to read what he wrote, namely that he read the
Goths=Getae equation in other writers, which puts the "theory" before
390 CE. What Haywards "suggests" can hardly count as evidence.

Torsten